Best way to approach disabling viofo parking mode

[Nostrra]

Hey guys,

I'll be having a viofo a119 mini v2 fitted next week by a professional using the HK4 hardwire kit and have a couple of questions.

I'm on the fence about parking mode, I can see it being useful but I get incredibly paranoid about draining the battery.

1.) In this scenario would you recommend doing twisting the red and yellow together and fusing off ACC, or is it likely fine to wire the regular way and turn it off in the settings. From what I understand option 2 will introduce a phantom drain from the LED, how likely is this to drain / damage the battery? I drive usually once or twice a week short journeys

2.) If I wire yellow, red together and fuse to ACC, will the camera forget its settings all the time?

3.) How reliable is the HK4 kit, I've seen there's been some troubles with viofo kits and their voltage protections

Appreciate it

 

[Nostrra]

Also just another one, does anyone happen to know the best fuses to use on a 2020 BMW 118i?

 

[Nigel]

I suggest wiring it correctly, so that you can use the parking mode when you want it, even if you don't often want it. The extra power drawn when the camera is off is tiny, and the LED is a lot smaller than a typical alarm system LED. If you regularly leave the car for over 2 weeks then it might be good to wire it so that it can be completely off, but for 1 drive per week it will be fine wired normally. Don't expect to get 24/7 parking mode with only 1 drive per week though, you should minimise the parking mode use, otherwise the battery will never get fully charged, and it is good for the battery to get a full charge occasionally. Setting the camera to turn off after 1 hour of parking mode might be sensible, that covers most supermarket visits.

 

[Nostrra]

I suggest wiring it correctly, so that you can use the parking mode when you want it, even if you don't often want it. The extra power drawn when the camera is off is tiny, and the LED is a lot smaller than a typical alarm system LED. If you regularly leave the car for over 2 weeks then it might be good to wire it so that it can be completely off, but for 1 drive per week it will be fine wired normally. Don't expect to get 24/7 parking mode with only 1 drive per week though, you should minimise the parking mode use, otherwise the battery will never get fully charged, and it is good for the battery to get a full charge occasionally. Setting the camera to turn off after 1 hour of parking mode might be sensible, that covers most supermarket visits.

Cheers nigel much appreciated, One of the main downsides I was reading is BMW's particularly sensitive battery drain notifications which I know would bother me, I know we can set the voltage protection (how reliable is that by the way?) but I reckon it might be best to keep it wired in to when the car starts to avoid those entirely as I don't think they'll trigger if the camera goes off after a couple of minutes.

I saw that there was some debate for a little bit about twisting the two power wires together, was there ever any conclusion on that or is it fine to do?

 

[Nigel]

Attaching red and yellow to the same fuse tap does work fine, but then you do not have the option of parking mode.

The voltage protection, I haven't heard of any issues recently, never understood the problem when it was reported, although I did appear to see it myself. Under most testing it worked perfectly.

I don't know about BMWs, it would be interesting to know if its battery drain warning activates on a 1 hour parking mode, or only on long term parking mode, the 1 hour really doesn't take much out of the battery. If you have parking mode turned off and it wired normally, then I think it is very unlikely that you will get any warnings since the power used is tiny. But like I said, I don't know much about BMWs, better if someone else answers.

 

[Nostrra]

Attaching red and yellow to the same fuse tap does work fine, but then you do not have the option of parking mode.

The voltage protection, I haven't heard of any issues recently, never understood the problem when it was reported, although I did appear to see it myself. Under most testing it worked perfectly.

I don't know about BMWs, it would be interesting to know if its battery drain warning activates on a 1 hour parking mode, or only on long term parking mode, the 1 hour really doesn't take much out of the battery. If you have parking mode turned off and it wired normally, then I think it is very unlikely that you will get any warnings since the power used is tiny. But like I said, I don't know much about BMWs, better if someone else answers.

Cheers Nigel much appreciated I do think wiring normally offers the best flexibility if I ever wanted to turn parking mode on in the future, I'll see if anyone replies and has experience as to whether the draw from the voltage protection LED triggers the battery management warnings, I have read newer BMWs are particularly sensitive

 

[bobcat]

To add to what Nigel said, wire the hk kit to where it supposed to go and set the v-cut off to 12.4v. Once the battery reaches that point, the hk kit will cut off the power to the cam, but what's interesting is that the battery voltage will jump back to 12.5v+ since the load is off now and no more "resistive" load on the battery. That way you should be good with some park mode (if you decide to have it) and your car should not trigger any voltage warnings.

 

[Nostrra]

To add to what Nigel said, wire the hk kit to where it supposed to go and set the v-cut off to 12.4v. Once the battery reaches that point, the hk kit will cut off the power to the cam, but what's interesting is that the battery voltage will jump back to 12.5v+ since the load is off now and no more "resistive" load on the battery. That way you should be good with some park mode (if you decide to have it) and your car should not trigger any voltage warnings.

Cheers bobcat my main thing is to avoid those voltage warnings as they'd annoy me to no end, I'm very pedantic about that kind of stuff. I'm guessing the viofo hardwire kits are reliable enough to trust the voltage cut offs

Also if I did end up wiring it to accessory on both leads, will the camera remember its settings?

 

[bobcat]

Cheers bobcat my main thing is to avoid those voltage warnings as they'd annoy me to no end, I'm very pedantic about that kind of stuff. I'm guessing the viofo hardwire kits are reliable enough to trust the voltage cut offs

Also if I did end up wiring it to accessory on both leads, will the camera remember its settings?

If you wired both to ACC (ie power when engine on) you have nothing to worry about. You'll not have parking mode but otherwise camera will be fine.

 

[Nigel]

I'm guessing the viofo hardwire kits are reliable enough to trust the voltage cut offs

I suspect your BMW will cut the power before the voltage cut off does, although that might depend on car model and how it is wired.

Also if I did end up wiring it to accessory on both leads, will the camera remember its settings?

Yes, it will. It will be identical to running it of the "cigar lighter" (accessory) socket, which is what a lot of people do.

 

[Landbo]

Also if I did end up wiring it to accessory on both leads, will the camera remember its settings?

Yes, your camera will always remember its setup, no matter which way you choose to connect it.

 

[Voldur]

I'm having this issue with the A139 Pro.

I have the park mode settings in the app set to off, but it never turns off and always records. I don't know if the settings isn't registering or what

I have my fuse tap batt wire (red) plugged into a spare fuse slot that is connected to the battery and the fuse tap acc wire (yellow) plugged into my power outlet fuse slot. Since I don't want to turn on/off my dashcam everytime I start or turn off my car, can I just unplug the batt wire and leave the acc wire plugged in?

 

[CaptureYourAction]

I'm having this issue with the A139 Pro.

I have the park mode settings in the app set to off, but it never turns off and always records. I don't know if the settings isn't registering or what

I have my fuse tap batt wire (red) plugged into a spare fuse slot that is connected to the battery and the fuse tap acc wire (yellow) plugged into my power outlet fuse slot. Since I don't want to turn on/off my dashcam everytime I start or turn off my car, can I just unplug the batt wire and leave the acc wire plugged in?

Did you test the ACC fuse you chose with a meter or are you just assuming there is no power there when the car is off?

 

[Voldur]

Did you test the ACC fuse you chose with a meter or are you just assuming there is no power there when the car is off?

I tested the spare fuse and just assumed on the ACC.

I just tested it now and there is no power to the ACC fuse I'm using when the car is off.

 

[SWoMP]

The acc lead does not supply power to the camera. It serves to tell the unit when the vehicle is parked (acc off) so that it goes into parking mode. The unit uses the permanently on feed for power when in normal or parking mode. Thats why I put a rocker on/off switch into the power supply lead to turn off power when the vehicle is garaged.

 

[Voldur]

The acc lead does not supply power to the camera. It serves to tell the unit when the vehicle is parked (acc off) so that it goes into parking mode. The unit uses the permanently on feed for power when in normal or parking mode. Thats why I put a rocker on/off switch into the power supply lead to turn off power when the vehicle is garaged.

Gotcha, so no matter what the BATT wire has to be connected. Sorry, new all this and learning.

In that case that would mean something is wrong with the fuse slot I'm using?

 

[SWoMP]

I had a couple of problems on one of my cars. These were both to do with terminals changing from live to dead, or vice versa, sometime after the ignition switch has been on or off. Tends to be true of modern cars with complex ECUs.

 

[VIOFO-Support]

I'm having this issue with the A139 Pro.

I have the park mode settings in the app set to off, but it never turns off and always records. I don't know if the settings isn't registering or what

I have my fuse tap batt wire (red) plugged into a spare fuse slot that is connected to the battery and the fuse tap acc wire (yellow) plugged into my power outlet fuse slot. Since I don't want to turn on/off my dashcam everytime I start or turn off my car, can I just unplug the batt wire and leave the acc wire plugged in?

If you have connected the hardwire kit correctly (the red cable is connected to a fuse that supplies constant power, and the yellow cable is connected to an ACC fuse), please confirm if you have set the parking mode to off successfully. Have you checked the video files? Does it record in parking mode or normal mode when your car is parked?

 

[Mtrev]

Gotcha, so no matter what the BATT wire has to be connected. Sorry, new all this and learning.

In that case that would mean something is wrong with the fuse slot I'm using?

A quick test to confirm would be sit in your car with the camera on and pull the acc fuse tap out and see what happens with the camera

 

[Voldur]

A quick test to confirm would be sit in your car with the camera on and pull the acc fuse tap out and see what happens with the camera

Ok, I pulled the ACC fuse tap out with the car running and camera on and the camera continued to stay powered and recording.

So to me that's telling me there is something wrong with the fuse tap itself, correct?

Thanks for the replies, as all this is new to me.